Procrastination is costing UK businesses £21 billion a year

The average Brit spends more than two hours procrastinating at work each day at a costing to businesses of £21bn a year, according to a recent survey.

The research of more than 2000 workers found mobile phones were the biggest source of dithering – accounting for a total of 80 minutes a day.

Messaging was the biggest time-waster eating up 28 minutes and social media, reading the news and online shopping were also included, the report by musicMagpie showed.

Daydreaming and gossiping also were high on the list, wasting 20 and 18 minutes respectively.

The survey found men are the bigger time wasters, procrastinating for 2 hours 51 minutes each day, compared to just 1 hour 52 minutes for women. It also found there were geographic differences. Glasgow was crowned the procrastination capital of the UK, with workers spending over 3 hours wasting time each day. Whereas workers in Nottingham are wasting the least time, with an average of just 1 hour and 18 minutes of procrastination.

The research also looked at which sectors suffered the most from procrastination. Beauty and wellbeing employees spend an average of nearly five hours procrastinating, followed by IT/Digital with just over four.

Agriculture and environment came out as the sector with the least procrastination, with less than an hour wasted each day.